Perdu
by Nena
Summary: 1xR. A piece about the emotional, mental, and spiritual struggles and insecurities Relena deals with after deciding to stop waiting for Heero. What better way to get over Zero-One then to take a stab at the other four Gundam Pilots?


Author's Note: This chapter has been in my computer for months, and I just couldn't seem to figure out where to take it. I originally planned for it to be a one-shot, but I couldn't find any type of resolution just yet, so I thought I'd just post the first chapter up. I don't think it will have many chapters, but don't quote me on that.

I've noticed that most of the fanfiction that I've written has been really serious and hasn't really dealt with the mental side of relationships very much - just short, sporadic moments of romance mostly, so I thought I'd give this a try. I could totally stink at it. I guess I'll be able to tell by your reviews (which are appreciated!)!

This is from Relena's POV, and deals with a lot of the insecurities that go through women's minds that we so often attempt (usually unsuccessfully) to ignore in unrequited and not-so-unrequited love. I'm not sure if the entire story will be in her POV. But I will say that this story may have a LOT of Biblical scripture and Christian influence in it.

I realize that the concept of this story has been done many times over, but I just wanted to take a stab at the idea one more time. And maybe put a twist on it. Or maybe not.

And, finally, I do not own Gundam Wing!

**_Perdu_**

There are some days, like today, when I can't begin to understand the conflict I have made of myself. Of my feelings and my value, the necessity behind my choices and the hopelessness that seems to try and line everything I've idealistically believed in. There were moments of pure agony, a wrenching in my chest that forced my throat to close up and my eyes to burn. A feeling that seemed to make everything in my body react to the area between my ribs, leaving no feeling left for my fingers or arms or legs or head. These moments happened when Heero would say something carelessly, not meant to hurt me, but with the same outcome every time.

He says things out of obligation to me, and that is what hurts the most. He says things because I ask him a question, or to inform me of something to do with my security, but never for just polite conversation. This morning, I woke up an entire hour early to get dressed up for him. I came to work hoping I could at least spark _some_ interest with the golden silk dress I had bought the weekend before and the nice tan I had been working on for a couple of months. And I don't care what they say about platform heels, they hurt. They make your legs look a mile long, but unless you have a desk job, don't wear them. The mesh scarf necklace had been a gift from a retired war veteran who also happened to be an inherit billionaire and was especially grateful for my efforts at peace. He told me I lit up the world for more people than I could imagine. I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't.

I had gotten a French manicure and pedicure the afternoon before, and even put rollers in my hair this morning. I spent a full thirty minutes meticulously putting on my makeup and then lathered myself in a rich lotion that smelled lightly of an oriental vanilla, and had been careful not to wrinkle my clothes on the ride to work.

He had walked into my office, not even looking me in the face, and dropped off some papers on my desk. When I didn't say anything to him, he glanced up at me for a moment, grunted, and walked back out. I had been so hurt, so intent on at least getting a small reaction out of him, and then he had dashed all of my work out the window. After the initial reaction of disappointment, I could only sit down slowly in my chair and stare at my desk for longer than I can remember.

Unrequited love was something I learned long ago would be more than a pain in the butt. It would take all of your time, hours of wasted dreaming, and too many wistful sighs to count. In the two years that I have worked in this office and worked somewhere near Heero Yuy, I have never, _ever_, been given any sort of clue that he returned my affections. Of course he accompanied me every time I left the building, and of course he slept in a room across from mine every time I had to go out of town on a political meeting, but that was all he ever did.

Perhaps he really did have no feelings for me the way the others all tried to make me understand and believe he did. Maybe it was out of a sense of moral obligation that he was so committed to my protection. Maybe he felt he had nothing left after the war was over, had nothing better to do than baby-sit me all of the time.

Maybe he isn't attracted to me the way I am to him. I suppose that could be as good a reason as any, an embarrassing one at any account, but still a reason with good excuse. He was tall and slender, but with long and hard muscles that sculpted his forearms and I'm sure other places along his body. The button-down shirts that he wore with the sleeves rolled back always blocked any view of anything above his elbows, but I don't have to see anything else to know there was strength beneath his apparel. His eyes were a shade of vibrant blue I've never seen anywhere else, terrifying clouds of mystery and incandescence that would nevertheless take anyone else's breath away. His hair was wild in its unmanageability, and that alone makes me want him more. The fact that he could look good with his hair any way at all makes me jealous.

A thought came to me, suddenly, that I _had_ seen that color blue before. In space.

Space is home to him. I can't deny that now, and I don't want to take away any sense of familiarity he has given himself, so I'm trying to ignore my worrisome thoughts for the time being and focus my attention on doing my work for the day. I wish I had never dressed up at all.

In a way, I know I love him. I was doomed to love him the moment he opened his eyes on those sandy shores and opened up his world to me, if only for an instant. I wonder sometimes if he remembers how he was vulnerable for a moment, if he regrets it now. I wonder if he would go back and change anything if given half the chance to do it. And I mean that, that anything. If he could go back and put the life he lived on some other child, orphaned someone else and lived a normal life with memories of first loves and graduation and college and marriage. I know he wouldn't. He is too kind, too self-sacrificing, and I believe that in a way he thinks he deserves whatever it is that haunts him so. I think he's cold because he doesn't know how to be anything else, even though a part of him wants to.

I play a part in that trauma. Something I was raveled into without really realizing it, and something of my own doing. He really did try to stop me. For so long I followed him around, not really knowing the rippling effects my actions were making on his life, the hope that seemed to hurt him when it was dangled before his eyes. We were both teenagers and so experienced, but he was experienced in ways that I was not. He knew of death and pain and misery and detachment, while I knew of apathy and responsibility and bound ambition. We were different in those things, but we were together in our inexperience.

Neither of us knew of love, what it was, if it was real, if it could change things. If it could change us if we wanted it too. Neither of us knew what it felt like to have a dream come true, that kind of emptiness you feel when everything you want is suddenly done – and nothing is left to do. Neither of us had ever felt the touch of human hands on skin in a way that was not friendly, but sexual, and we were both frightened by it. Perhaps that is why we waited so long. We weren't disinterested. We were afraid.

The door opens quietly, and he slips into my office with his gun in his hand. It is after hours now, and he's coming to take me home. The hair above his eyes is angled jaggedly along his forehead and leaves him with a frightening look, but his eyes heighten it. Heero has no expression on his face, but his eyes tell you what he's thinking, if he's thinking anything at all. Right now I think he's thinking of getting me in the car so he can drive me home as normal, but I don't think I can take one more day of normal.

He seems surprised when he looks me in the face. It's unusual for him to ever look surprised…in fact, this may be the first time I've ever seen him with that look on his face. But then, a memory of him saying "_Huh? On my side?" _flashes through my mind, and I can't help but smile at it. We were so naïve.

I find it less than fitting that he should give reason behind his assumptions of me. I believe that Heero Yuy is unknowingly a shadow of himself, and _that _he cannot change. Because he does not understand the beauty of _who he is_, he finds it hard to understand someone of my standing. I believe he sees me as a contradiction of what he was always taught to believe – that people are, at heart, only interested in the betterment of themselves. And that we all, to be honest, live by our emotions. My emotions are woven into my work and their necessity, and the emotions that I feel that have nothing to do with the vice foreign ministry – love and bliss, to put it plainly – are ignored.

Whatever confusion had been there before was suddenly replaced with a quiet, bored expression, and he stood solemnly next to my door waiting until I was ready to go. I took my time, gathering my various files and stamps that would make my job much easier, and when I had fully gotten everything packed neatly into the brown leather messenger bag I had been carrying since I began this job I walked swiftly out the door. He followed silently behind me and scanned the hallways and walls, opening doors and guiding me by the small of my back like a perfect gentleman, but painfully detached from the source of all of his protection.

When we reached the car he held open the door as I slid quietly into my seat, not looking at me or touching me but rather close to my face as he leaned into the car while surveying underneath the frame of the vehicle. His eyes were quick and calculating, and he was satisfied with his check sooner than I expect anyone else would have been. He was amazing in that way and I had gotten used to it.

The car ride back to my house was dubious, and he sped home in order to give me time to get ready for the charity ball I had been formally invited to by the President of the United States. When I reached the door I hurriedly dug my keys out of my bag and jammed them into the deadbolt lock, but I paused when I realized Heero had not left. I turned around and stared at him.

"Where is Trowa? Isn't he supposed to be the one accompanying me tonight?"

He scowled slightly, a small creasing of the brow, but I noticed it and laughed softly. It only seemed to make his scowl worse.

"He had an accident at the circus this morning. Apparently, Catherine has never thrown daggers _between_ Trowa's legs before."

I snorted and then couldn't help but giggle, holding my hand to my mouth.

"Stop laughing."

Immediately, it was like a dark cloud had suddenly formed over my head. I wasn't shocked, to be honest, to find him so openly condescending. But I felt like some babbling idiot, like a little school girl who laughed at anything her first crush said, and I was embarrassed in a way and at such a time that I couldn't understand it. It is ironic and a little sad that he has that effect on me. He can sober me up in three syllables, and bring me back down to a level that I don't like to be at.

Did he think me so immature? Was I _that _annoying to him? I certainly didn't deserve that, but he obviously thought that whatever it was that I was laughing at didn't require my open humor, and I flushed without being able to help it. Angry, I bit my lip and glanced at him only a moment before turning and walking back into the house, slamming the door behind me.

As I made my way up the stairs and to my room, I took deep breaths, trying to control my puzzling reaction to him. Of course that should have hurt _anybody's_ feelings, but why did it feel like more than that to me? Heero had a way of hurting me more than anyone else I had ever known by doing the smallest things. I try to remember his circumstances – that he hadn't grown up like normal children do, that he was, in a word, untouchable. Simply because that's all he knew how to be. I try to be patient with him, and I don't expect him to treat me as a girlfriend because that's not what I am…but he could at least not say things like that.

And now that I think back on it, he did have a slightly apologetic look on his face as I slammed the door when I turned – barely traceable, and had I not known and studied his facial expressions for so long I would have missed it – but the way his mouth was parted slightly and the confusion in his eyes gave way to his regret. Of course he would never tell me he was sorry.

No. That would be dangerously outside the lines of our _professional_ relationship.

I jerked open the door to my room and growled under my breath, wrenching off my stupid necklace and placing it back in its case. The dress was immediately deposited in a crumpled mass of silk on the ground, the shoes I nearly broke the window with as I threw them across the room. It's not like me to get so upset about something so frugal, but I'm entirely exhausted. It's like there's this huge part of me that keeps getting pulled down by all of the things in my life that aren't fulfilled, some young girl – before the charity balls and peace conferences and gundam pilots – who is slowly beginning to forget she ever existed outside of it all. I don't ever want to get so comfortable with my life that I forget all of my dreams.

And Heero Yuy was always the dream.

No matter how many times he doesn't react to what he's feeling or forgets to mention something that's important to me, there's this place in me that I just know God made in me for him. I can't explain it, and I've given up on trying to. All I know is that it's there, and there's nothing I can do to change it.

The phone ringing pulled me back into reality, and I immediately grabbed it from off my night stand and stared at the caller identification screen. A familiar number that I could not remember _when_ I memorized glowed brightly on the screen. There was a click and a moment of silence before I heard someone on the other end take a deep breath.

"Dorlian residence."

"Relena?"

I noted the nervousness in his voice and immediately knew there was something wrong. I sighed, not sure if it was because of his "hideous" experience that would no doubt scar him for the rest of his life, or because of something else. It's not a far stretch to say that his fan club of beautiful women would be shocked by it, but it was odd to hear Trowa Barton sound uncertain about _anything_.

"Hello, Trowa. How are you doing?"

"I'm alright. Did you just get home?"

"Yes. I'm afraid I can't talk too long, I've got to get ready for the charity ball tonight, if you remember…"

There was an awkward silence (for me, anyway) while I listened to the other end of the line. Sensing it (a little late, I suppose), he finally coughed into the phone. It made me grin.

"No, I didn't know that that was going on tonight. Heero told me you weren't going because of bad flight conditions."

The grin was gone.

My brain immediately went into overdrive as it attempted to work out every possible reason why Heero Yuy would not want Trowa to accompany me to this ball. If there really were bad flight conditions then Heero wouldn't want me to go on the plane at all, even if he was going to be with me. I suppose that security had been tight lately because of several threats this week, but if that were the case then he and Trowa would have accompanied me tonight. There was a weird moment last week when Duo had mentioned that Heero had been rearranging their shifts and screwing Trowa and Duo over on their hours and doing security checks on their phone lines and computers, making sure to know whenever either of them was in contact with me. But that almost sounds like…

I laughed. _Nah…_

"Relena!"

"What?!" I nearly jumped off the bed. I've never heard Trowa that loud before.

"Where did you go? I've called your name five times."

"Oh, sorry. I've got a lot on my mind. What did you call me about, Trowa?"

"Well, I guess it's kind of changed now. I was thinking that since you didn't have that charity ball tonight, maybe you and I could go out to a movie."

Silence.

And then…

"But since it's back on now, I guess I'll be body guarding you."

I bit my lip and thought about it. What harm could it do? Trowa was sexy. And smart. And kind.

"Actually, Heero will be on shift tonight, Trowa."

"Oh. Figures…"

"But…you could go as my date, if you wanted."

For some reason, I could feel him smiling.


End file.
